April 16, 2018

University of New Hampshire researchers have discovered a combination of materials that they say would allow for smaller, safer magnetic random access memory (MRAM) storage — ultimately leading to ultraminiature computers.

Unlike conventional RAM (read-only memory) SRAM and DRAM chip technologies, with MRAM, data is stored by magnetic storage elements, instead of energy-expending electric charge or current flows. MRAM is also nonvolatile memory (the data is preserved when the power… read more

April 13, 2018

Google announced today, April 13, 2018, a new experimental publicly available technology called Talk to Books, which lets you ask questions in plain-English sentences to discover relevant information from more than 100,000 books, comprising 600 million sentences.

For example, if you ask, “Can AIs have consciousness?,” Talk to Books returns a list of books that include information on that specific question.

April 6, 2018

MIT researchers have invented a system that allows someone to communicate silently and privately with a computer or the internet by simply thinking — without requiring any facial muscle movement.

The AlterEgo system consists of a wearable device with electrodes that pick up otherwise undetectable neuromuscular subvocalizations — saying words “in your head” in natural language. The signals are fed to a neural network that is trained to identify… read more

April 4, 2018

Bloombergreported this morning (April 4) that Apple is planning a new iPhone with touchless gesture control and displays that curve inward gradually from top to bottom. Apple’s probable use of microLED technology promises to offer “power savings and a reduced screen thickness when put beside current-generation display panels,”according to Apple Insider.

Ranging from AI-enhanced medical imaging to nanometer-scale MRI and a skin-implantable biosensor

March 30, 2018

Printing your own bioprinter

Now you can build your own low-cost 3-D bioprinter by modifying a standard commercial desktop 3-D printer for under $500 — thanks to an open-source “LVE 3-D” design developed by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers. CMU provides detailed instructional videos.

You can print artificial human tissue scaffolds on a larger scale (entire human heart) and at higher resolution and quality, the researchers… read more

New post-Hebb brain-learning model may lead to new brain treatments and breakthroughs in faster deep learning

March 28, 2018

A revolutionary new theory contradicts a fundamental assumption in neuroscience about how the brain learns. According to researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel led by Prof. Ido Kanter, the theory promises to transform our understanding of brain dysfunction and may lead to advanced, faster, deep-learning algorithms.

The brain is a highly complex network containing billions of neurons. Each of these neurons communicates simultaneously with thousands of others… read more

March 26, 2018

Scientists from RMIT University in Australia and Wuhan Institute of Technology in China have developed a radical new high-capacity optical disc called “nano-optical long-data memory” that they say can record and store 10 TB (terabytes, or trillions of bytes) of data per disc securely for more than 600 years. That’s a four-times increase of storage density and 300 times increase in data lifespan over current storage… read more

Applications include monitoring the brain in paralyzed patients, watching for epileptic seizure signs, and real-time feedback for robotic arms

March 23, 2018

Neuroscientists at the Neuronano Research Centre at Lund University in Sweden have developed and tested an ambitious new design for processing and storing the massive amounts of data expected from future implantable brain machine interfaces (BMIs) and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).

The system would simultaneously acquire data from more than 1 million neurons in real time. It would convert the spike data (using bit encoding) and send it… read more

March 21, 2018

An international team of scientists has developed an algorithm that represents a major step toward simulating neural connections in the entire human brain.

The new algorithm, described in an open-access paper published inFrontiers in Neuroinformatics, is intended to allow simulation of the human brain’s 100 billion interconnected neurons on supercomputers. The work involves researchers at the Jülich Research Centre, Norwegian University of Life… read more

March 19, 2018

MIT bioengineers have developed a new microfluidic platform technology that could be used to evaluate new drugs and detect possible side effects before the drugs are tested in humans.

The microfluidic platform can connect 3D tissues from up to 10 organs. Replacing animal testing, it can accurately replicate human-organ interactions for weeks at a time and can allow for measuring the effects of drugs on different parts of the… read more

March 16, 2018

Mathematicians at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a radical new approach to machine learning: a new type of highly efficient “deep convolutional neural network” that can automatically analyze complex experimental scientific images from limited data.*

As experimental facilities generate higher-resolution images at higher speeds, scientists struggle to manage and analyze the resulting data, which is often done painstakingly by hand.

March 14, 2018

Two researchers — Robert McIntyre, an MIT graduate, and Gregory M. Fahy, PhD., 21st Century Medicine (21CM) Chief Scientific Officer, have developed a method for scanning a preserved brain’s connectome (the 150 trillion microscopic synaptic connections presumed to encode all of a person’s knowledge).

That data could possibly be used, centuries later, to reconstruct a whole-brain emulation — uploading your mind into a computer… read more

March 12, 2018

An international team has developed a soft, elastic, high-density stretchable electrode grid for long-term, stable neural recording, and diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders, such as epilepsy.

Researchers at Linköping University and ETH Zürich developed the biocompatible, soft-material composite, which avoids the usual damage and inflammation to neurons from rigid metallic electrodes and components.